


Sights

by cecilantro



Series: 100 Days Of Ficlets [33]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-16 10:18:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14162658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cecilantro/pseuds/cecilantro
Summary: Their blade moves like tapered shadow, and Caleb’s hands move like the dawning sun, light blossoms with the fire he drags from his arm, down his hand, and explodes.Don't get attached, says Caleb, killing himself for Beauregard. Oh, and Molly's there too.





	Sights

**Author's Note:**

> some warnings for like, physical violence generally in line with the usual DnD style for the first part.
> 
> Also this is a widomauk household shipside, but i fuckin ADORE the dynamic between Beau and Caleb  
> actually i just REALLY like Beau... mmmmaybe i'll write some jester/beau idk im kinda likin that
> 
> Roughly inspired by [Sights by London Grammar](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxIymtM-xVU), because I get my music off of australian soaps.

When he’d first joined up with the group later known as The Mighty Nein, Beau was the last of them that Caleb would have assumed he’d be killing himself for, but he sees her leap ahead to meet the cruel-looking sword of an assailant with her staff and knows she’ll sweep too high. Their enemy’s hand twists, he knows they will feint and arc for Beau’s unguarded midriff, and he’s forward, he lurches and leaves his stomach and wits behind, the arc begins, Beau’s eyes widen, even her lightning reactions couldn’t move the clumsy staff to meet the blade now, and then there’s Caleb. His hands twist, a twig, a string, he can’t get to her fast enough but Shmidt can, there’s the _fuhwp_ noise of his conjuration and the assailant’s blade sticks in seemingly thin air, very briefly, Shmidt is made of only the arcane, but it’s enough for Beau to spiral out of the arc. Momentum interrupted, and Caleb is still forward, the assailant turns, instead of Beau, they face an angry wizard. Their blade moves like tapered shadow, and Caleb’s hands move like the dawning sun, light blossoms with the fire he drags from his arm, down his hand, and explodes. And switch, the other hand singes, back again, the third beam, all three strike true split seconds apart, head, stomach, chest, and their enemy dissolves in mid-air, bursts like a firework into ash and dust. His blade, his last action, stays stuck hilt-deep between two of Caleb’s ribs in the most skilled swordswork that he has ever come up against. There’s a darkening patch on his shirt, leaking through to his jacket, he lowers his hands and looks down, trying to pant heavily with exhaustion but it bubbles in his throat, he can’t seem to pull in enough.  
The pain hits him at once, and Beau, inches behind him, catches as he falls.  
Jester is there in moments, Fjord, Nott, and Molly come in a wide arc up to his other side, Molly clutches at Nott’s shoulder, when she looks, his eyes are wide and terrified like she has never seen him. Any of his confidence, grandeur, rage, evaporates at the sight of one of his own like this, lying just upright against Beau’s shoulder, she’s on her knees, her staff is abandoned,  
“Caleb, no, you fuckin’, you fuckin’ idiot, why-” She stumbles over the disbelieving half-insults, Jester crouches beside them,  
“Make way for the Cleric! Caleb, I’m sorry,” She grits her teeth and takes hold of the handle of the sword, “This is going to hurt like _fuck_ .” and pulls it out as straight as possible, Caleb thinks he tries to scream, but with one lung collapsed, it’s _very_ hard to breathe, nevermind such a strenuous noise.  
Jester throws his coat open and tears, hard, at the slit in his shirt, the wound between his ribs is papercut-thin but bubbles blood every time Caleb takes a breath, she presses her fingertips just under it, doesn’t slap a hand over it, like she usually would, Beau looks at her in terror,  
“Shit like this!” Jester gestures with the hand not currently soaking itself in Caleb’s blood, “Takes care! If I don’t heal him from the inside out, he will fill with air, and then we will have a Caleb balloon that dies much less dramatically than the rats.”  
It’s enough, Beau shifts her lower arm around Caleb’s waist a little tighter, a better grip, and lets Jester’s radiant healing do as it will as she slowly, carefully, focuses her mind and will on knitting internal flesh back together, repairing the fragile membranes. It takes only around a minute, though it feels like hours for the spectating, for the healing to well up to the surface, the wound healing over into a pink line.  
Caleb finally takes a breath that doesn’t burn like acid, Jester sits back to wipe her hands on a piece of cloth she pulls from her pocket with the least blood-spattered.  
He sits up, tentatively, by himself, and is immediately dragged to turning around by Beau.  
He thinks she might punch him in the nose, but she doesn’t- she drags him into a hard, tight hug, locking her arms around his neck so tight it becomes hard to breathe again, for a far better reason this time. He’s not one for the physical, but he pulls his own arms from his side, folds his hands together between Beau’s shoulder blades and sighs. He feels her swallow, hard, against his shoulder, a telltale shake masks a sob, and when she pulls back she uses her natural speed to sweep away the few, escaping tears before anyone else can know, under the guise of pushing away the free strand of her hair.  
“If you _ever_ do that again, I will kill you myself.” She threatens him, and he knows her well enough by now to know it’s not a totally empty threat, he chuckles.  
And then Mollymauk is pulling him upright by the collar of his coat, and he, too, wraps himself tightly around Caleb’s neck and squeezes, very briefly, there’s no words, he releases and pushes him at Nott, who scrambles to his side,  
“I thought you were dead.” She tells him, frowning, “Again.”  
“Ah, but I am not, thanks to Jester.” He waves a hand at her and turns over his shoulder to smile, but Jester’s expression is stormy,  
“Caleb you fucker!” She seethes at him, “You don’t take fucking hits for us! We take hits for _you_ !”  
Beau steps in, arms folded, beside her, nodding.  
“I could’a took that blade, I’m beefy.”  
Caleb squints, can’t tell if she’s bragging or worried,  
“I- I saw, you were, you would have missed the parry, I didn’t _think_ I just, I just wanted to, to, to-” He’s cut off, Molly at his side, a hand on his wrist. Despite Molly’s exceedingly confident nature and calm smile, the grip on Caleb’s wrist is one of panic,  
“To help, Caleb, we know.” He turns his soothing smile to Beau and Jester, it takes on an edge of threatening. “We _know._ ” he repeats, and although Beau’s face twitches through an expression of a snarl, she loosens her arms and turns to step beside Fjord instead, he mutters and pats her shoulder as she joins him, Jester stares Molly in the eyes, defiant, her tail lashes slowly behind her.  
Molly switches the hands on Caleb’s wrist and shifts the newly freed one up around his shoulders, pulls, guides him past Jester. He looks over Caleb’s shoulder to make sure that Nott has hold of the edge of Caleb’s jacket and walks in step, and once satisfied of this, he turns his eyes back to the front and keeps them there, firmly, he guides Caleb back to the inn. He stumbles only once over his panic for the wizard, and reassures himself that Caleb is still alive by turning and pressing a kiss, gently, to the side of his head. Caleb exhales, a soft laugh.

 

Molly turns over the _present_ card.  
Caleb sits bolt upright in bed, he makes no sound, he’s learned his nightmares so well that he can suppress the resulting scream subconsciously, he does stand, though. Almost immediate, and pulls on his boots. He takes none of his possessions save his dagger, slipped into his waistband, his fingers tremble too much to fasten the buckle on his sheath belt. He knows. He tried. And flung it at his pillow, biting down on his other knuckle to muffle the frustrated, rasping scream that followed. He’s so _sick_ of being so delicate.  
He puts his spellbook on his bed, so that if Nott should wake up, she knows he’ll return. It’s a signal he’s learnt to use for her, she worries so much if she wakes and he isn’t there.  
He leaves that thought in the room behind him as he slips out of the door.

He passes Wessik carefully, moves through only when his attention is on a late-night patron, leaves the bar, he doesn’t go far. He slips into the alley at the back of The Leaky Tap, it’s lit by only one lamp, in the middle, the majority of the narrow street in dim light, glimmering over wet flagstones.  
His mind rages with memories, the push-and-pull of his natural defence battering away each memory as it comes at him, dragon-like, tries to shred and burn at his mind. He channels that frustration into his hands, they’re unbound, he doesn’t intend in any way to cast, there’s no electric buzz. But he moves through the motions of his spell, one at a time, starts with Fire Bolt. He has variations on that one. For power he pulls it down his arm, like Scorching Ray, spiralling, casts it on an open palm. For accuracy, he uses two fingers to drag from the opposite wrist, aims, points, fires. For speed, he combines, an open palm pull from the wrist, though that one is more of a panic reaction, he practices them each in a rolling pattern, three times. And then moves on, Dancing Lights, he practices the conjuration first. A wide sweep, a flick at each destination for the lights, and when he’s done that three times, he makes the movements of the arcane to combine them, a squish-stretch.  
The alleyway remains dark. He can’t even summon the mental energy to conjure his lights.  
He skips over Friends, the movements are too simple to distract him from the whirlwind of flame in his mind. To his first-levels, Burning Hands, his personal twist on it is drawing strength from the force of his life, arcane points in his wrists, he drags it to his fingertips before he bumps his thumbs together, repeats another two times, he loses track of his own list, jumps to Detect Magic.  
And when he loses track completely, he moves back to the spell he knows best, again, Fire Bolt, the wheeling motions of strength, again, again, it becomes background noise and he drops back into his nightmares, burning and charring and the destruction he’d wrought, he could have been so much, and he will never be, he doesn’t even notice the firelight glow in his hands until it’s twining around his wrist like a snake, searing lines against his flesh, he curses and panics and fires at the damp floor. There’s a hiss of steam as it collides, Caleb steps back and stills for a minute, panting.

Molly wakes with a sudden noise, his first instinct is to look to Fjord, but his roomie is sleeping soundly on the other side of the inn room, so he stands and slips to the window, instead.  
He spots Caleb, in the street, his shoulders pulled up and heaving for breath. Already, he worries, and the dry, singed, slightly steaming sunburst a few feet in front of him does nothing to allay these concerns. Caleb spends almost a full minute staring hollowly at the patch, and then turns, almost aggressive, Molly watches him go routinely through spellcasting motions. He recognises them, Fire Bolt, Burning Hands, Scorching Ray, rinse and repeat, and Caleb’s motions grow faster, more erratic, Molly leaves after the third repeat of Fire Bolt mach accuracy, tugs his boots on and slides out of the room as quick as he can, his last glance of Caleb is the beginning of Scorching Ray.  
He doesn’t look at Wessik as he leaves, perhaps the Dragonborn has gotten used to Molly slipping out alone in the deep hours of the night, he doesn’t bat an eyelid. Out of the door, he slips around the corner, sees only crates at first, he can hear the ragged sobbing breaths and a moment later, spots the trembling toe of Caleb’s boot.  
He moves, quickly,  
“Oh, Caleb.” And slips down beside him.  
Caleb’s hands are clenched in his hair, he chokes himself on his own tears, from what Molly can see of his eyes, he knows the wizard isn’t seeing the trembling knees it appears he’s staring at. Molly wraps an arm around his shoulders and pulls him in, hushing, shushing, it’s sort of like hugging a trembling, sobbing stone, he shakes, rock-hard in Molly’s embrace, Molly just continues to talk, low. He finds words, eventually, talks about absolutely nothing, tells Caleb Fjord’s bedtime routine, or about what he and Beau did when they were free to explore Zadash by themselves. He tells him about Beau’s hidden heart, stipples that one with _but I suppose you know_ , because Caleb can read her just as well as Molly can, maybe even better. He tells Caleb about the silver she’d handed off to begging children when she’d passed them, and after a while, Caleb begins to loosen. He sags, creaks onto Molly, almost like he’s melting, oobleck without application of force, he turns from solid to liquid in Molly’s arms. And, eventually, summons the energy to pull an arm up, across Molly’s waist. They sit in the damp for a while, Molly continues to mumble stories to Caleb, he’s gone back to Yasha at the Carnival by the time Caleb’s tongue finds its way back to his head,  
“Why,” he tries, it comes out as mostly a rasp, he tries again, “Why are you here, Mollymauk? It is- it is two in the morning, you should be, asleep, in bed.”  
Molly sighs and shifts a hand to tilt Caleb’s chin up, so that Molly can meet his eyes,  
“I saw you from my window.” He tells him, honest, he lets Caleb see everything, “You seemed… odd, off, even for you. After today…” he stops to shake his head, opens his eyes to meet Caleb’s again, each time an electrical static shock to his heart, “Each time you go down, Caleb, I watch part of my heart collapse, right in front of my eyes.”  
Caleb gives a breath that sounds like a bitter laugh,  
“You chose the wrong person to fall for, then.” The arm over Molly’s waist tightens to a hold, and Molly smiles, just a little curve at the edge of his lips, Caleb is running his mouth tonight.  
“No fire will burn your wit out of you, I see.”  
“You may be resistant to burns, Mollymauk, but I am invulnerable.” A genuine smirk for his own smart tongue, and Molly decides, chiefly, to put it to better use- he kisses Caleb, initiator, but lets the wizard lead him. Everything Caleb does seems an elegant, elaborate dance, from picking his way around the parts of the truth he won’t sacrifice, to his spellcasting movements, even to kissing Mollymauk in the damp alley, Caleb’s hand finds the base of Molly’s horn and grips, loose. It’s not for control, but for grounding, a solid surface to prove to him that Molly is real, if the gentle fingers running trails up and down the side of his waist weren’t enough.  
Molly sets a hand to his shoulder and pushes, just slightly, enough to pull away,  
“Yes, about time, but could we possibly continue in one of our rooms? It’s fucking freezing, and my ass is wet.” Molly grins at him, brighter than any fire Caleb could ever evoke, and Caleb chuckles at him as he stands,  
“We are, we are less likely to wake Nott than Fjord, she will sleep through near anything after the amount of alcohol she’s had in her tonight.”  
“Then your room it is.” Molly stands beside him and takes a brief moment to press a quick kiss to Caleb’s lips, and lets the wizard lead the way back inside

**Author's Note:**

> CNNWM is in two hours, i HOPE i can keep up with both that and dailies and dammit im gonna try my damn best.


End file.
